Yeah, if you're looking for Japanese titles PlayAsia or YesAsia are your best bet unfortunately. They are pretty expensive and you can occasionally get stung for customs fees too so be careful. It's always worth checking eBay, you can sometimes get lucky with a UK seller having the title you're after. I've got a few of my bullet hell shmups that way.

Parksey wrote:What's the best place to import US titles to Japan? Looking at getting the Switch version of Isaac, but it's not even out in the UK yet. Could download but fancy the box.

So how much for the box?

Back in the day when I used to import US stuff I always used VideoGamesPlus. Their prices were cheap, service was great and they always marked stuff as 'toy' on the envelope so you never got charged customs!

Downside was that they are a Canadian company, so sometimes you got cases with a bit of French text. If you're a collector of game cases that kind of thing might bother you.

I haven't used them in ages so I can't guarantee they'd still be as great as they were, but just had a quick look and they offer free worldwide shipping, so it might be worth a look.

In my job I offer Customs advice to the public. As such I know what you're potentially (Should be) getting stung with in terms of customs charges.

Basically if the value of the item is more than £15 you should be getting charged Import VAT. Over £135 and you have VAT and Import Duty. This is charged on the value of the item (As declared by the sender) and the cost of any postage/insurance they have paid. Remember this is down to what the sender declares, not necessarily what you have paid. The VAT rate is decided by what the goods are declared as. Most things attract VAT at the standard rate of 20%, though there are some things that attract a reduced rate (5%) or Zero-Rate (0%).

MHTL said he didn't get any charges because they declared it as a "Toy". This may or may not be the case as I've no way of knowing what VAT rate they would have used for that. However it's equally likely that it just wasn't passed to customs to be charged. Parcelforce/Royal Mail are responsible for passing any parcels that meet the criteria of a charge to UK Border Force. Due to the volume of parcels this doesn't always happen and things get through. I will say that this is happening less and less though as the process becomes more efficient and computer controlled.

So it's a gamble. You SHOULD pay a charge on things over £15, but it is possible that it will slip through. Bear that in mind and take into account that you'll potentially have a charge to pay when you're buying things.

Like I said, it's been a while since I bought anything from there. It might have been because they marked the value down instead, the 'toy' thing just sticks in my head as being odd. Either way, I ordered at least twenty things from VGP and was never stung for customs, whereas other companies have been far more hit and miss.

more heat than light wrote:Like I said, it's been a while since I bought anything from there. It might have been because they marked the value down instead, the 'toy' thing just sticks in my head as being odd. Either way, I ordered at least twenty things from VGP and was never stung for customs, whereas other companies have been far more hit and miss.

The value thing is more likely, yeah. The problem is that UK BF don't physically inspect every parcel, as there's just too many of them for that. So in most cases they just go by the declaration made by the sender.

more heat than light wrote:Like I said, it's been a while since I bought anything from there. It might have been because they marked the value down instead, the 'toy' thing just sticks in my head as being odd. Either way, I ordered at least twenty things from VGP and was never stung for customs, whereas other companies have been far more hit and miss.

I've never been stung with customs charges on anything from VGP but my bank did keep contacting me saying someone had used my card in Canada almost every single time.

Man, I remember the Megadrive / SNES time in the early 1990s when there were loads of independent videogame stores with imported games easily available. I guess it's a good thing that, today, games are *usually* released globally.

Cheeky Devlin wrote:In my job I offer Customs advice to the public. As such I know what you're potentially (Should be) getting stung with in terms of customs charges.

Basically if the value of the item is more than £15 you should be getting charged Import VAT. Over £135 and you have VAT and Import Duty. This is charged on the value of the item (As declared by the sender) and the cost of any postage/insurance they have paid. Remember this is down to what the sender declares, not necessarily what you have paid. The VAT rate is decided by what the goods are declared as. Most things attract VAT at the standard rate of 20%, though there are some things that attract a reduced rate (5%) or Zero-Rate (0%).

MHTL said he didn't get any charges because they declared it as a "Toy". This may or may not be the case as I've no way of knowing what VAT rate they would have used for that. However it's equally likely that it just wasn't passed to customs to be charged. Parcelforce/Royal Mail are responsible for passing any parcels that meet the criteria of a charge to UK Border Force. Due to the volume of parcels this doesn't always happen and things get through. I will say that this is happening less and less though as the process becomes more efficient and computer controlled.

So it's a gamble. You SHOULD pay a charge on things over £15, but it is possible that it will slip through. Bear that in mind and take into account that you'll potentially have a charge to pay when you're buying things.

Cheeky, do you know if there's actually likely to be any comeuppance if you undervalue items on CN22s so customers get charged less tax? I don't do it currently because customers are less likely to have their packages ripped open overseas if they're accompanied with a legit invoice on the outside of the package (and therefore not charged a handling fee if the tax is exempt), but I've always wondered this. What's to stop sellers from just lying about this all the time?

MHTL, the marking down was almost certainly the reason, pretty much everything except food, books and some clothing is subject to tax unless it's a gift in which case there is still quite a low threshold.

On topic, I've noticed there's an increasing number of sellers on eBay actually in Japan shipping stuff, but the prices are likely to be quite high because the exchange rate is awful. Your best bet is somewhere that deals in bulk and so creates cost efficiencies.